


i searched and had a different view

by ggwynbleidd



Series: Dethentine's [2]
Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Dethentine's, Gift Fic, Little Mermaid Elements, M/M, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29368764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ggwynbleidd/pseuds/ggwynbleidd
Summary: Melmord's boss has some new ideas about marketing for underwater albums. Unfortunately, Melmord develops a soft spot for the new focus group.Done for the Dethentine's prompt "Disney/Ghibli inspired."
Relationships: Magnus Hammersmith/Melmord Fjordslorn
Series: Dethentine's [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2152359
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	i searched and had a different view

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agaricales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agaricales/gifts).



Melmord found himself staring at the tank more than he ever expected to. It was shocking the first time, but the shock had worn off at some point and had been replaced with a cool sort of acceptance. And curiosity. The water within was dark and murky and he strained his eyes. Sometimes, the lights would allow him to see glimpses. The flick of a tail, covered in dark black scales with pale chunks of missing flesh, long fins that were ragged at the end. The illusion of a face, or a body, or hair.

He had heard others talking when he had first walked into the chamber with Offdensen.

"Caught on the coast-"

"About bit my damn hand off-"

"A scar, maybe from a harpoon-"

It had all bled together into unintelligible talk. He wasn't even sure if it was real or not. Melmord hasn't laid eyes on it. And mermaids weren't real, ever, right?

But whatever this was, he knew one thing - Offdensen was thrilled to get his hands on it. For market testing for another water-based album. Melmord found that on the same level of kidnapping a unicorn to see how it would reply to Dethklok Horse Hay (For Horses!) because he had no idea why they couldn't just go to a Ripley's and put some speakers in the tanks.

Melmord approached the tank cautiously. The klokateers ignored him for the most part, he had made himself at home here to eat lunch and read in his spare time, so the guards gave him no attention. He pressed his hand against the glass experimentally. It was cool from the chilled water that was meant to replicate the temperatures of the deep sea.

He tapped the glass. The cardinal sin of fish ownership. And jolted when a light began to approach the glass.

The light - a single bulb-like appendage hanging from the top of a head - cast a yellow glow on the face that stared at him from behind the glass. It wasn't a mermaid that had been caught.

It was a merman.

A merman who had a rough life, apparently, judging by the thick scar tissue on his chest and across his face, the damage to his face turning one of his large, black eyes cloudy and white. Melmord stared dumbly, mouth hanging in shock, until he saw the creature's face do the same.

He tapped the glass again and smiled when the merman repeated the tap with his knuckles. Melmord's smile was mimicked with a flash of sharp teeth.

"Hi…" he whispered. The merman's lips moved mutely.

Hands pressed against the glass, they stared at each other.

Melmord had expected a monster. Not something so human. Five fingers on each hand, hair, lips, eyes, a nose, all distinctly human. There was something about this that hurt his heart, settled in his chest, made his brain hurt.

"I'm sorry," he whispered again. Those human lips moved again.

His phone went off and made him jump, and as Melmord jumped the merman swam into the depths of his tank again. It was Offdensen wanting his attention for something again and Melmord grit his teeth at getting paged and interrupted. He found himself thinking about that encounter the rest of the day. And the next, and the day after that.

Melmord returned the next week with his dinner, late at night with almost no guards. His security clearance let him sneak in without a thought. And up on the scaffolding he sat, unwrapped his food and waited.

"Hey," he called out, voice bouncing off metal walls. "It's me."

The water shifted and bubbled until just a face popped out of the water. Melmord waved and smiled when he was mimicked again with a wave from the merman.

"How's it going?" he asked. The merman seemed to repeat him, but no noise came out. "Can't talk, huh?"

He took a bite of his sandwich. His action was pantomimed with air, two hands lifting up to the merman's face and pressing against his mouth.

"You hungry?" Melmord asked.

He took one half of his sandwich and disassembled it. He didn't want to make the guy sick and had no idea what he ate. So he offered bread first.

"Bread?"

The merman sniffed it, and recoiled with a chatter. He did the same with the lettuce, and the pickles, and the tomato - the latter drawing an especially disgusted face from him.

"Ham?"

Now that was snatched out of his hand eagerly. Their fingers touched - the merman's cold and slick with some kind of coating Melmord couldn't identify.

"So you eat meat, huh?" Melmord chuckles as the ham all but disappeared. He eyed the eggs he brought with him and smirked. "You like other kinds of protein?"

He held it out and the merman sniffed it. Took it gently and delicately nibbled it with the front of his sharp teeth. And chattered again, holding it back out to Melmord as he spat what he had bitten off into the water.

"Sorry, buddy, it worked in a movie I saw," Melmord chuckled.

The merman looked at him in a way that Melmord could almost describe as skeptical, but he didn't want to assign random emotions to him. That felt unfair. But, he wanted a friend, and it's not like he had a worthwhile friend in here.

So, he talked to him. About his day. About himself. About his bosses, about what they did, where they were. And the merman would listen (or maybe he didn't, but he sat there) with a look on his face as if he was actually paying him attention and absorbing it. Melmord wasn't sure if there was a language barrier or if it was just the simple fact that the merman was paying attention to the noise.

Maybe, Melmord was just talking to something that would kind of respond to him. The way that he would talk to his dog at the end of a hard day at work in his old apartment back in LA. He missed that dog. He was cute. Melmord told the merman that, too, and he was met with a cock of his head until Melmord explained the concept of dogs.

"It's getting late," Melmord finally announced. "I...I gotta go, dude. I hate to tell you that, I know you probably get lonely."

The merman chattered his teeth again and the second eyelids of his eyes blinked. Melmord stood and the merman stirred awkwardly in the water. He waved goodbye, the merman mimicked his movement, and he went back to his room.

He was making this up, somehow. Melmord would wake up and there would be no mermaid. There would be no weird underground bunker thing that he was at with Offdensen right now. Maybe, he would wake up and he would be back in his apartment in LA. He hoped he was.  
Melmord woke up to the same uncomfortable bedroom.

But, he had a friend. Kind of. That was important.

It was a few times a week that he would go down to the room with the tank. He would bring ham for the little guy, sometimes tuna, sometimes turkey, but he really liked ham. Melmord was pretty sure that he saw some movie about some other sea creature that liked ham, too, but maybe that was when he was high. How many movies were there about befriending sea-dwelling beings with food anyway?

Even if he was kind of doing the same thing. Especially the night that Melmord came to the scaffolding above the tank and the merman popped up without prompting. He was smiling, without prompting, and he even waved on his own.

"Holy shit!" Melmord said with a laugh. The merman rasped his own little noise of joy and swam in a circle eagerly before Melmord started to toss stray cold cults into the water. "You happy to see me, huh? Is it just because of the food, or because of the fact that I talk to you?"

He wondered how the others treated him while he was here. He hoped that they were nice to him. That they just played him music - no more, no less, but he was here for so long...and separated from his friends. Or a family? Did he have a little merwife, and merbabies, with a pet tuna that was waiting at home and agonizing for his return? Melmord was torn between hoping that he did and that he didn't at the same time. Because, well, if he did...that was sad. But also, maybe it gave him something to look forward to other than Melmord's nightly visits involving ham and him complaining about whatever Offdensen said recently that irked him.

But, the worst thing that Offdensen said was yet to come.

"We're moving it."

Melmord felt his mouth go dry and his blood turned icy cold at that. He had come with his extra bag of ham, and his own dinner, and had found a group of klokateers and Offdensen himself standing there in front of the tank.

"Wh-what?" Melmord sputtered out quickly.

"We're moving it. You're going to come with me, as a guard, but no more, no less. No more interaction," Offdensen nodded his chin up at a blinking light in the corner. "No more food. No more conversation."

Melmord hung his head shamefully and stared at his shoes as anger pooled in his stomach.  
The merman was shifted to a different tank. A smaller one. Melmord knew that they had to have been horribly uncomfortable - that the tank he had been in previously was too small compared to the fast depths of the ocean anyway, but this one had to be worse. Melmord felt his heart hurt as he watched him be transferred in a sling, water splattering to the floor, a low, scared rumble resonating from the merman's chest.

He looked at Melmord.

And he smiled, and he waved, and Melmord felt like he was going to be sick.

The tank was moved onto a boat that Melmord found to be tight and cramped and he could only imagine how the poor guy felt. He wanted to fix it. He wanted to do...something. But he was forbidden from even going into the room that the new tank was taken into. It had guards, armed, and Melmord didn't have the security clearance to even go inside.

Offdensen wasn't smug. Just his usual businesslike self. And that made it worse.  
It was the first day into the journey to wherever they were taking him that the rain started. As the hours grew by, it worsened. It turned the seas frothy and grey, the sky overcast and miserable looking, and Melmord was seasick faster than he ever had been before. It was bad.

A crack of thunder woke him up in the middle of the night. The carpet in his room was wet. Melmord groaned as he stood up and rubbed his eyes. He stumbled into the hallway, soaked through with seawater, and heard a yell. There was something about a lifeboat. But he was so disoriented, he could barely process anything, especially considering the way that the wind whipped and howled from outside.

He got to the deck and stared out at the sea. The boat was going down. He saw rafts on the ocean. Was he being...left behind?! Melmord suddenly froze.

The merman. He had to help him. Had to save him. He could swim, yes, but he may have been trapped.

A crack of lightning made him jump and a violent pitch of a wave careened him into the sea. Everything was dark, and shockingly cold, and Melmord was in a panic. He sank further, and further, and further down in the dark. He was drowning. He was going to die.  
And Melmord woke up again on sand, under the sun, a hand in his hair and a soft, familiar chattering. He opened his eyes to look at the form above him and he found himself smiling first and foremost in relief.

"Hey..." he said softly.

The merman smoothed back Melmord's hair from his face again and smiled with a toothy grin.

"You saved me," Melmord coughed weakly. "Like, goddamn dude. Look at you go."

The merman sat up on the sand and Melmord pulled himself upright, looking out across the beach. There were a few parking spots up the way, he was near civilization.

"Do you live nearby?" he asked. "Like...is your home here?"

"Yeah," the merman said.

Melmord blinked. Okay. So he finally just talked.

"You saved me," the merman continued, voice raspy and soft.

"No, no dude you-"

Melmord felt his throat tighten. He found himself unable to speak.

"You...saved me," the merman repeated.

"Saved each other? Split the difference?" Melmord smirked.

The merman nodded. The sound of voices across the beach made them turn their heads.

"You gotta go," Melmord said as he saw Offdensen approach in the distance. "Go on, man."

With a sad look, the merman pulled himself forward on his arms into the ocean. Melmord smiled as Offdensen approached him and grunted as a klokateer offered a hand to help him off of the sand.

"Are you okay?" Offdensen asked curtly. Melmord nodded. "Good. It's gone, is it?"

Melmord cut his eyes out onto the horizon. He saw a thin arm and hand raise up out of the water and wave.

"Yeah. He...he's gone."


End file.
